as an ex-employee at cycle gear, (Now working at The Helmet Center) "Bilt" makes a street helmet that retails for $99 which they advertise as MSRP.

Cycle Gear has them "on sale" for $49.

Bilt is not "made" by cycle gear. although they are the only ones who carry it, cycle gear paid a large company (HJC, KBC, ext) most likely kbc to manufacture cycle gears brand of helmet which is "bilt"(lol) to cycle gears specifications.

Now, for those who are in retail sales, you will understand where im coming from.

Cycle Gear advertises there BILT helmet at an MSRP of $99. (dubble of actual price)
this is a common technique of retail stores ( basically telling the customer "your getting one hell of a deal!")

Cycle Gears Actual Cost on that helmet is around $20. ( there margins are rediculous)

and KBC or who ever actually built the helmet had to make money too right?
so now you have a $10 to $15 helmet. maybe even less..

now cycle gear could say there bilt helmets MSRP is $500 and on sale on for $49! because it is there brand of helmets. there is no higher power to report too.

you will NEVER see a current model shoei, arai, or even HJC advertised below a certain thresh hold price amount online simply because the manufactures do not want people to think there helmets are cheap. even if there is a sale. outdated models do not count.

Still want to wear a BILT helmet??

dont even get me started on "sparx" helmets manufactured by KBC.. Hence why they are no longer in business..

 

The wife tried on one of the BiLT mesh jackets a couple weeks ago. Frankly, it seemed like quality similar to the other mesh jackets they had there, which had name brands on them. No way for me to tell for sure w/o a crash test, though, obviously...

That's all true, and it's all just as true of Shoei, Arai, and everyone else. IF (and I emphasize IF) CG has nobody in between them and the manufacturing plant, then it's quite reasonable to expect their cost to be significantly lower than those big names that go through 1 - 3 distributors before hitting a retail shelf. If they were made in the same plant (IOW, take high Japanese, european, or American labor costs out of the equation), Shoeis and Arais wouldn't cost much more to actually manufacture than most any other helmet. Take the massive advertizing/racing budgets away, and even their retail prices could drop very significantly.

The point here is just to agree with you that a claimed MSRP isn't any way to tell the quality of a helmet. Neither is a 'street' selling price. Outfits like Shoei and Arai set minimum advertised prices partly to protect small dealers, but significantly to protect their reputation. If everybody realized that a Shoei X-12 only cost Shoei $30 to manufacture, including fancy paint, people would get really pissed over having to pay 25x that much for one! {Hypothetically speaking; I don't know Shoei's cost}